Harvard research explores ‘RNA world’

Cuvettes sit in the middle of a Rayonet reactor under a mercury emission lamp.

Welcome to the Origins of Life Initiative, a biochemical journey through the Universe.

The Origins of Life Initiative supports multi-disciplinary research aimed at revealing if life is abundant in the Universe. We seek to understand how the initial conditions on planets, including our own Earth and planets around other stars, dictated the origins of life and its subsequent evolution. Using this knowledge, it will eventually be possible to study the atmospheres of far distant planets for signs of life, including planets that might be Earth twins.